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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25100605">A Soul, Submerged in Sleep</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin'>kaeorin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Loki's Lullabies [102]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anxiety, Avenger Loki (Marvel), Comfort, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Insecurity, Literal Sleeping Together, Reader-Insert, Sharing a Bed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:22:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,752</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25100605</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not abnormal for someone like you to own a weighted blanket, but maybe you’re feeling awkward enough about it to want to avoid explaining it to Loki.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Loki (Marvel)/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Loki's Lullabies [102]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>225</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Soul, Submerged in Sleep</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I know that, early early on (like, possibly when these were still in the single-digits), someone requested a lullaby wherein Loki discovers weighted blankets, but I searched my Tumblr inbox and can't find who it was. Was it one of you commenters? If it was, let me know, and I'll drop your name so everyone knows who to thank (or blame)!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You thought you did pretty well at keeping it hidden. It wasn’t something you were really all that embarrassed about. You knew it wasn’t anything to be ashamed of, either. Loki already knew that you had issues with anxiety. He knew that sometimes you got caught in nasty little spirals of depression and self-loathing, and not once had he ever made you feel like you had to keep those kinds of things from him. If anything, he almost made you feel bad about trying to hide them from him—but only with the gentle, careful way he treated you when he found out. You knew that, if he found it and asked about it, all you had to do was explain that it helped you sleep better at night and he’d leave it at that.</p><p>Lots of people had weighted blankets these days. It was almost trendy lately, not that Loki knew or cared much about Midgardian trends. Still, when he stayed over, you always made sure to kick your weighted blanket down to the end of the bed and wedge it a little between the mattress and the foot board. You could sleep without it, especially when Loki was there with you. It just wasn’t something you really wanted to get into, that’s all.</p><p>Maybe it was silly to expect to keep it a secret forever, especially when Loki came to stay at your apartment for the quarantine and started looking for little things that he could do to surprise you. You were in the living room, taking care of some mindless stuff for work. It was nearly your unofficial “stop working now, for the love of <i>god</i>, your coworkers surely stopped working hours ago” cutoff time, but you just wanted to finish one last thing. As far as you could tell, Loki was in the bedroom. Maybe he’d taken it upon himself to fold the hamper of clean laundry. </p><p>Those were the kinds of things he did, sometimes. Folding laundry. Washing dishes. Sweeping and vacuuming. It felt horrendously wrong for him to be doing something like that, and, for a long time, you’d leapt up to try to take over for him so that someone of his stature wasn’t doing Earthly chores, but that had led to a few too many arguments. By now, he’d mostly worn you down. As mortifying as it was for you to let him, doing those kinds of chores made him feel more like this was his space, too. He was contributing something, as opposed to merely taking up space in someone else’s home. And of course it warmed you, made you want to cry a little, to know that he wanted this place to feel like it was his home too. So you fought, <i>hard</i>, against your own nature, and let him do those kinds of things.</p><p>Resolutely, you closed your laptop and sat forward to put it on your coffee table. Maybe you missed Loki a little. So you got up and wandered towards the bedroom, ready to put your arms around him and hide your face in his chest.</p><p>He <i>was</i> in the bedroom. The empty hamper near your door told you that you’d been mostly-right about what he’d been doing, but now he stood on the far side of the bed, tucking a fresh fitted sheet under the corner. He looked up and grinned at you when you walked in.</p><p>“I thought I’d surprise you.” He gestured to the mattress, and you had to fight your smile.</p><p>“And then I went and ruined it. I’m sorry. Do you want some help?” But you didn’t really wait for an answer before ducking to pick up one of the pillows. You stripped it and then grabbed a fresh pillowcase from your drawer of bed linens. He allowed you to help without a word of protest, which wasn’t <i>entirely</i> unexpected, and soon enough, the bed was all back together and perfectly made. You sat down on “your” side of the bed. Belatedly, you remembered the weighted blanket, and looked towards the end of the bed. It wasn’t there.</p><p>Loki must have read your mind, because he hoisted something up off of the floor. The blanket. “Darling, I meant to ask you. What in the nines is <i>this</i>?”</p><p>You tried not to focus too intensely on the heat burning in your cheeks, and looked away from him. “It’s a blanket, Loki.” There was no way that you’d be able to play this off as something normal, but...maybe you couldn’t help but try. He made a sound very similar to a disapproving <i>tsk</i> and let the blanket drop solidly onto the mattress. </p><p>“I can <i>see</i> that it’s a blanket, but why is it so heavy? My first thought was that it was filled with precious stones or something, but then I realized that wasn’t really your style.” You didn’t have to look at him to know how he’d be studying you, searching your face for something like the truth. You chewed on your lower lip and reached out to stroke the velvety fabric.</p><p>“No, I don’t know what it’s filled with, but it’s called a weighted blanket. It’s good for anxiety, because the weight presses down on you and it’s supposed to do the same things in your brain as, like, a hug or a massage. It’s just...comforting, especially when you live alone. It helped me sleep better before you came around.”</p><p>“You fall asleep with that weight on you?” He didn’t sound convinced. “I’ve seen you panic when you feel like you’re trapped while putting on a sweatshirt.”</p><p>You laughed despite yourself, and despite the way the memory made your cheeks burn a little hotter. “It’s not the same thing.” You stood up, then, and did your best to fold the blanket, then draped it over the foot board. “Human brains must be different from Asgardian brains. I don’t know that it’ll do anything for you, but I can show you tonight.”</p><p>He accepted your desperate plea to change the subject, then, and tackled you back down onto the bed to cover your burning cheeks with sweet kisses.</p><p>You’d hoped that he would have forgotten the whole thing by bedtime. He didn’t mention it over dinner or while you sat cuddled into one another on the sofa. You were even tempted to slip into the bedroom under the guise of going to the restroom or something so that you could shove the blanket into your closet. Out of sight, out of mind, right? But you didn’t. Maybe that felt a little <i>too</i> sneaky and dishonest. He didn’t hide things from you, even though he very well could have. </p><p>When the two of you made your way into the bedroom again, to sleep this time, he pulled the comforter down and slid beneath it. There was something in his face, and something about the way he didn’t quite look at you as he got into bed, that told you he was willing to let this slide, if you wanted to. But how could you? He had to be curious about it. You knew how curiosity could gnaw at him and make him focus on nothing but the questions he wanted answered. But he clearly saw how strange you felt about the blanket, and he was willing to let it go so that you wouldn’t be uncomfortable? That was enough to make you <i>have</i> to show him, wasn’t it? With a faint smile, you picked up the blanket and let it unfurl, then spread it out on top of Loki. You made a big show of tucking it securely around his body, and he looked up at you with such open love and adoration in his eyes that you almost wanted to cry. </p><p>He untucked his arm as you went around to your side of the bed, and held it out in invitation. You usually slept curled into his side with your head resting on his shoulder, and that’s what he wanted tonight, too. How could you deny him that?</p><p>When you were settled comfortably beside him, with your comforter pulled up around your shoulders, he kissed the top of your head. “It makes the rest of my body feel the way it feels when you sleep here,” he said in a low voice. He tightened his arm around you as though to illustrate what he was saying. </p><p>You turned that over in your mind. You knew how it felt to sleep under your weighted blanket, of course: comforting and secure and solid. But you’d never once entertained the notion that you could make someone <i>else</i> feel like that. You swallowed, hard, around the lump in your throat and rubbed your face against his chest. “See?”</p><p>The two of you chatted a bit, the way you usually did in bed at night. He ran his fingers through your hair and kissed the top of your head and you kept tightening your arm around his chest in an embrace. These were some of your most favorite times with him: quiet, sleepy, and yet still so open to each other.  Tonight, perhaps you lifted your head and strained upwards towards him for a kiss a little more often than you normally did. But who could blame you? Once again, this beautiful, celestial prince had discovered something weird about you and simply accepted it. Hell, he even seemed to delight in it, from the way he kept wiggling his toes and moving his legs and then sighing peacefully into the top of your head. </p><p>On any given night, you were usually the first to fall asleep. You’d never really been able to tell if that was something that Loki did on purpose—keeping watch until you were sleeping peacefully—or if he simply had a harder time falling asleep than you did. But tonight, you heard the way his words began to slur a little when he spoke. His voice was low, but you could hear his sleepiness there in the sound. Tonight, he was the first to fall asleep. You laid there in silence for a while, listening to his heartbeat, so strong and steady and precious. The sound of it lulled you to sleep as well.</p><p>The last thing you could remember thinking before you finally drifted off was a quiet, happy thought that perhaps, in the morning, you should start checking online shops to see if you could find a weighted blanket in emerald green.</p>
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